


The Dark Side's Dispatches

by TobermorianSass



Series: On-dits from the lives of the rich and the obscure [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Nightmares, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, abuse mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 18:44:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4490574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/pseuds/TobermorianSass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war was neither as simple or cleanly cut as the history books would make it later on. In fact, it did not end in 1998. </p><p>Justin fought in one war, the one that went down in the history books. Zacharias Smith fought in the other one, the one which happened after, which ended up buried in files in the Ministry archives. The guilt, the memories and the nightmares from each are not equivalent, they discover one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dark Side's Dispatches

**Author's Note:**

> I am not certain that the warnings I've included in the tags cover just how dark this fic gets in bits. Proceed with caution.

**DISPATCH #1: RECRUITMENT AND RUNNING**

There is the smell of burning in the distance and someone’s hand, cool and comforting, slips into Justin’s as they watch the sparks shoot into the sky – as the beams slowly collapse in on themselves and first the roof, then the walls slowly crumble. The muggle firemen try their hardest to put out the flames – tank after tank, team after team with their hoses – but it isn’t enough. He should go up to them and tell them. Save them the effort. Save them a night of pointless work. There is nothing that can stop this inferno; not all the good will in this world. They don’t know that, but he does and he should tell them, he really should, instead of standing there like a useless sack of potatoes.

The fire is magic, of course. It always is, nowadays. And now, the old Georgian era house – _childhood home_ , a treacherous part of his brain whispers – is nothing more than a smoldering hollow that nothing can save. It doesn’t matter now; he wouldn’t be able to recognize it if he went up to it. Anything that it could have been, that could have reminded him of the past, has all disappeared in flame.

He wonders, idly, if this means all his rugby memorabilia is gone as well and feels a short pang of regret.  

Justin tells himself that the pricking behind his eyelids is only because of the thick smoke billowing everywhere as the last of the wood burns away, leaving only the cold stone skeleton burning and burning as though fire could undo stone. Someone pats him comfortingly between his shoulders and Justin wants to scream, or run up to the firemen and watching villagers and tell them that there is nothing, nothing they can do except leave and hide. Run away and hide forever, before the war takes them all.

He turns away from the fire because really, there is nothing they can do here.

Kevin’s hands, he sees, are shaking, and though he tries to smile encouragingly at Justin, his smile wavers and falls flat. Dean is pale – so many of them are pale, but Kevin and Dean, Justin knows, are different from the rest of them. Doubly unlucky. Colin and Dennis, at least, could scrape together enough money, along with their parents, to send them out of the country. Not Kevin and Dean though.

“What now?” Dean asks Justin.

Justin looks from Kevin to Dean to the rest of them. He doesn’t bother looking back. _Burn every bridge if you must_ , his father had told him, before hugging and kissing him for the first and – Justin was certain – the last time. The _only_ time, probably.

At least, he thinks, he won’t have to do any actual burning here – half of that has been done for him already.

“London,” he says, smiling reassuringly at the two of them, “We’ll get them out by tonight.”

“Justin –“ Kevin begins hesitantly, but stops when Dean places a hand on his shoulder.

“I promise,” says Justin, “It won’t be the same, but they’ll be safe.”

He puts an arm around a shaking girl and they trudge off into the woods together to Apparate down to London.

* * *

It starts with the burning, or perhaps, smoke choking his lungs. He can’t breathe and it’s hot, much too hot. The house is burning, it must be burning and he cannot run because he is strapped to his bed. This is his punishment: he stays and burns because he could turn and run the last time. It burns and it burns and the flames creep up around his bed and he can only watch as their masks appear through the flames – hollow and leering and taunting down at him.

You may have won the war, those empty masks taunt him, but you will die and you will lose this one.

And then everything is blinding and white hot pain, as though the flames are magnesium fire knives and these burning magnesium knives are stabbing him over and over and all the while the empty masks crowd around him laughing and laughing and laughing –

Even in that in-between dream world, Justin gropes for his wand and casts the spell before he allows himself to open his eyes.

“Justin,” a familiar voice says, “It’s me. Zach.”

The world comes slowly into focus. There is a warm hand on his shoulder and there are no empty masks floating above his bed, or flames or smoke, even. On his left side, just his forehead and his eyes  - and his blond hair sticking in all directions – visible over the side of his bed, Zacharias Smith is watching him carefully.

“You had a bad dream,” Zacharias says unnecessarily, when he’s certain Justin isn’t going to hex him.

Justin nods mutely and sits up in bed, running his hand through his hair, “Nightmare.”

This is also unnecessary, but it feels right, because this is more than just a bad dream. Bad dreams are failed NEWTs or A-Level Physics exams. Nightmares are his bed burning with him in it or a pair of snake-eyes in the dark. There is a qualitative difference.

He can’t help but be aware of the way Zacharias watches him silently, as though he’s trying decipher something about Justin, as Justin swings his feet over the side of his bed and contemplates the pros and cons of brewing a Sleeping Draught at this hour of the night. He could simply take the muggle pills he keeps with him stowed nowadays, for when brewing the draught is impossible. This is _France_ , this is a _holiday_ – _everyone’s holiday_ , which means the past remains firmly locked away in England where it can bother no one.

Sort of.

“It’s the war,” he says by way of explanation, because Zacharias is looking at him with a mix of fear and concern – was he screaming again? He must have been screaming again, he thinks, if he brought Zacharias down from his room in the attic – when there’s no need for either, “It – dreams – things, they turn up.”

The harsh angles of Zacharias’ face soften and he gets up from where he’s kneeling next to Justin’s bed and sits beside Justin.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks Justin uncertainly. _Awkwardly_ , Justin thinks.

“No,” says Justin and then adds, “Yes. I don’t know. I should – you should sleep.”

“ _Can_ you sleep?” Zacharias asks him, doubtful. The underlying questions – the real question is obvious: if you sleep, won’t you dream again?

Justin fidgets restlessly with his sheets, “I have – there are potions – pills, in my trunk.”

He steals a glance at Zacharias – the man is watching him with an unreadable expression.

“It’s not,” he gestures vaguely, “I –“

It all comes to the fore without warning. The burning, the dying – _Colin Creevey_ , bleeding to death in his arms no matter how many times he whispered the spell over and over again, _tergeo, tergeo, tergeo_ like a prayer to a deaf God – the crying and the screaming. Justin ducks his head and rubs furiously at his eyes.

Just his fucking luck that of _all_ the people in this house, it has to be _Zacharias Smith_ who sees him like this.

Justin steels himself for the inevitable taunt or goodhearted – whatever passes for goodhearted in Zacharias’ eyes – jibe; instead Zacharias places an arm awkwardly around his shoulders, pulling him closer. He should maybe resist more, but Zacharias’ shoulder feels just right and there is too much inside him to think about anything besides all the things he refuses to think about the rest of the time.

“I couldn’t even heal him,” he whispers, half into Zacharias’ shoulder, “He wasn’t even fighting. The one time he listened and stayed out of it and someone cut him wide open with a knife – one of those cursed ones, I think. Dennis was – and Dean – and then Kevin beat the arse’s head open with a beater’s bat – and there was blood everywhere – I couldn’t even heal him –“

The next thing he knows, his face is buried in Zacharias’ shoulder and he is sobbing uncontrollably as Zacharias rubs his back soothingly, because four years later, he can still feel the warm trickle of Colin’s blood over his fingertips.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers hoarsely, much later, “I shouldn’t have –“

“Come downstairs,” Zacharias says gently, offering Justin the edge of his bedsheet to wipe his tears, “I’ll make you tea.”

Justin considers staying up here and trying to go back to sleep, where Zacharias cannot watch him with something approaching concern. Downstairs he might be tempted to do something unwise like tell Zacharias all about the nightmares, or maybe even tell him about the war. This is something that _Ernie_ is better suited to, he tells himself. Zacharias is – a distant stranger, or maybe the other side of the river, with no bridge in between them to be burnt by an overburdened confession of post-war guilt. Maybe Zacharias, he thinks, will know what Ernie can’t know. Maybe he should wait for the sun to rise and confess this all to Ernie, Hannah and Susan instead of Zacharias Smith, an almost-stranger and sometimes friend.  Maybe he should go back to bed and let them awkwardly pretend this conversation never happened at all.

“Let me wash my face,” he tells Zacharias.

* * *

It is precisely two fifteen in the afternoon on a Monday in September – the first Monday of the month, to be precise – 1998, when Sally-Anne Perkins first comes knocking for him. He remembers the moment with crystal clarity because this is the moment from which his life starts to devolve into a long stretch that is little more than an alcohol-induced and drug-hazy blur, occasionally violently punctuated by memories which stand out in sharp relief in their accuracy. Upstairs, Susanna is taking a break from her studies and sunbathing on the roof. The antique clock he bought in Paris on a whim, chimes the first of the Westminster Quarters. Jimbo, the stray mongrel he adopted one day on a whim, runs to the door and then back to him and back to the door again, tail wagging wildly. Outside, everything is blurry and the air hangs heavy and silent from the tail end of the summer heat.

“For fuck’s sake Jimbo,” he swears without rancour as the mongrel affectionately entangles itself between his legs, and then he opens the door.

“Sally,” he says surprised, and frowns in confusion, because the girl standing in front of him looks much older than he does; much older than she _should_.

“Well,” she says, once he’s stared at her for nearly a full minute, “Aren’t you going to check if I am who you think I am?”

He searches wildly for a suitable question, “Michael’s response to you joining the DA,” he says, plucking a memory from his mind at random.

“D’you know he spent a month in hospital because of the Cruciatus?” she asks him conversationally, “’Merlin Perkins, didn’t know snakes had morals’. Missed all of the funerals and the celebrations, poor boy. Aren’t you going to let me in?”

He pulls Jimbo the enthusiastic mongrel away from the door by his collar and lets Sally-Anne in,  as he absorbs the thought of Michael having been under the Cruciatus long enough to warrant him spending a month in St Mungo’s.

“Your first mistake,” she says coolly, planting her bag down on the side table and removing a file from it, “Letting me in. Your second mistake,” she hands him the file, “Was running in the first place.”

“What?” he says, taking the file from her, “Jim, down boy.”

“Oh I like dogs,” she says, kneeling down and scratching Jimbo’s head, “It’s very simple, _Smith_. Your holiday is over and now it’s your turn to fight. Unless you want to be put on trial so we can investigate any potential connections you might have to the Death Eaters.”

His uncle’s face, wild-eyed and murderous, is suddenly thrust forward in his memory and he swallows nervously.

“Connections.”

“You, running away from the Siege like that – your family tree – you have to understand it all looks very suspicious from where I’m standing, but luckily, there are people in very high places willing to overlook all of this if you’re willing to help them out a little.”

“What kind of high places?” he asks her cautiously, because this is a threat, this is a textbook threat if anything.

“Secret ones,” she says, “Open the file and have a look before you decide one way or the other. _I’ll_ understand if you say no, of course, but my employers and the interim Ministry and people’s court won’t. Lucius Malfoy was given the death sentence, by the way – French style. You should have seen Draco’s face during the sentencing.”

The words jump all over the page, even though Zacharias frowns in concentration.  It’s far too hot, he thinks, hot and stuffy and he ought to open the windows. Breathing might be easier then. The words might even stop swimming all over the page – words he remembers saying, but with all kinds of annotations: ‘constantly questions The Boy Who Lived, sows doubt in the minds of people’ ‘believes You-Know-Who more worthy of allegiance’ ‘hopes The Boy Who Lived and the Student’s Resistance ‘get what’s coming to them’’. Words and thoughts cut and reframed like ransom letters cut from magazines.

_Far too proficient with the Cruciatus Curse._

_Failed to produce a Patronus._

_Marked untrustworthy by both the Order and the Student’s Resistance_.

On the last page, at the end of this indictment, there is a rough sketch of his family tree, along with red circles around the family members who are known Death Eaters, presumed Death Eaters and known sympathizers. There is a lot of red. His father and mother are marked with a green C – _c for collaborator_. His name has a blue question mark. His brother and sister’s names are written in plain black ink with no circles or letters in coloured ink, which he supposes denotes a clean slate.

There is a photograph too, taken last year; the most damning evidence of all. It is him with his uncle, Charles Selwyn – name circled with red and marked with a DE on his family tree – on the lawn outside the Smith family home. His uncle’s arm is thrown around his shoulder and they are _laughing_.

He wonders which of his parents surrendered this photograph and what they were promised in return for it.

Of all the friends he has, he can’t think of a single one of them who wouldn’t, at this moment, agree with every single word in that file. Michael is in St Mungo’s from prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus. The last thing Anthony and Susan and Tracey and Ernie saw of him was him turning and running from Hogwarts. Giving in to his baser instincts. There is no reason why they shouldn’t believe his baser instincts did not include using the Cruciatus on unsuspecting muggles. In that last year, he had begun to suspect, anyway – the way Anthony went shifty eyed and Susan held herself aloof and Tracey regarded him with pity – that they were keeping secrets from him because he refused to choose one way or the other.

It is a very warm afternoon and Zacharias wishes there was some cool surface he could rest his forehead against.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks her quietly.

“I thought you’d see sense,” she says, taking the file from him, “Your uncle escaped the Aurors a few months ago, in the company of Evan Rosier – possibly also, Avery and Mulciber. _I_ wanted to reel you in all the way back in June, but my superiors have a strict policy about making sure all our temporary agents are perfectly legal. So, find your uncle and his friends and turn them in and we’ll forget all about this file.”

He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, “I don’t know – France is _huge_ – _you’re my age_.”

“Glamours,” she says succinctly, “Lisa will be working with you – just to make sure, you know. Use your brains. If you need to do more, then I assume you’re smart enough to judge what you need to do; assuming you want this file to be conveniently forgotten and not slipped to the people’s court. D’you know Draco only escaped being sent to Azkaban because his mum smuggled him out to France? Very thrilling, all of it.”

All of this is delivered in a bored voice that makes Zacharias wonder how many times she’s made this same pitch. How many times she’s told people some lie, mixed with a half-truth that matches what they know and what they expect – _I started out in this business at a young age and I was planted in Hogwarts to keep an eye on The Boy Who Lived, surely you didn’t think we’d leave him to the whims and fancies of Dumbledore alone, did you_?

That story must be as true as the way the little passageway feels as though it is shrinking by the moment; neither are true, but inexplicably, it feels true and real.

“Lisa,” he says, latching on to the one thing that makes sense, “She’s in on this too.”

“She volunteered, do keep up dear – obtuseness isn’t becoming,” she holds out her hand and Zacharias shakes it unthinkingly, “Jim,” she kneels and pets the dog affectionately, before straightening up, “Belated Happy Birthday _Zacharias_ ,” she says and leaves before the words in his throat can come unstuck.

The clock strikes the second quarter of the Westminster, loud and jarring against the summer silence. Fifteen minutes. There is no sound from upstairs, so Susanna must still be out on the roof. Jimbo skitters back from the door which Sally has just shut behind her. He stops at Zacharias’ feet and looks expectantly up at him, large eyes friendly and trusting.

Jimbo, he thinks, must be the only person in the world who trusts him unreservedly, despite what he is. Susanna only trusts him because she is fourteen and she doesn’t know any better. Even his friends know better. _Marked untrustworthy by the Student’s Resistance_. That, at least, accounts for Ernie’s growing disdain for him in their final year.

The passageway continues shrinking, crushing all the breath out of him – or maybe it’s the hot summer air doing that, sucking the breath out of his lungs like some tender but relentless dementor’s kiss. Everything spins wildly and the stupid clock chimes the third quarter, far far away.

He sinks to the floor and holds the dog close, burying his face in the coarse, short fur.

* * *

Zacharias wonders idly, as he boils the tea, what Justin would do if he told him that if he had to choose between the recruitment methods of the Death Eaters and the Ministry, he would choose the Death Eaters. There is certainty to the Death Eaters’ method: refusal ends in pain or death and both are certain and definite. Heroic, even. The other method has the power to simply rewrite one’s history and one’s life and to present one, mangled and distorted, to one’s friends as a traitor. The other method is what cowards get for being cowardly: psychological torment and torture. 

Justin is sitting at the table, idly fidgeting with his wand.  He could, Zacharias reflects, possibly understand what he means but on the other hand, he still dreams about the war and the cruelty of Death Eaters and to ask him to understand Zacharias’ own ambiguities is an unfair burden to place upon him.

Somewhere deep inside, some very sick part of Zacharias fantasizes, with malicious satisfaction, that Justin will react with revulsion or disdain. In that sick part of Zacharias’ imagination, the figures of Justin and Ernie merge together to produce an ur-conscience – a perfectly moral being – who leers down at him and confirms that he is disgusting for even contemplating that pain and death could be desirable, particularly at the hands of Death Eaters. _Death Eaters_ , it hisses, _are not desirable_. An even sicker part of him replies with the assertion that the Death Eaters, at least, were straightforward about what it was they wanted from him, which made them _honourable_ at least.

The smell of tea, he remembers, makes him nauseous and dizzy.

Or maybe he means France. Sleeplessness. Death Eaters.

It’s hard to remember which.

He holds his breath as he strains the tea, throws the leaves out and then places a cup in front of Justin.

“So,” he says, cradling his own cup in his hands, trying not to breathe in its scent, “Do you want to talk about the dream – sorry, nightmare?”

Justin takes a sip of his tea and then puts the cup down on the table, “Was I screaming?”

“Yes.”

“Could you make anything out?” Justin continues.

Zacharias shrugs, because if Justin can keep his cards close, so can he, “If you don’t want to talk about it, tell me. I don’t care, either way – only if it’s troubling you that much, you probably should get help.”

“The wizarding world doesn’t really go in for therapists,” says Justin, “What sort of muggle therapist would believe I’ve seen half of what I’ve seen, without me blowing apart the Statute of Secrecy?”

He frowns, racking his brains for a muggle conflict he remembered Seamus talking about once nearly five years ago, “You could tell them you were in Ireland,” he hazards.  _Northern Ireland_? Five years is too long to remember.

Justin regards him steadfastly, thoroughly unimpressed with this suggestion and Zacharias wilts under his steady gaze. Not Ireland _or_ Northern Ireland, then. He really should check with Seamus which it was.

“Muggle wars?”

“Why don’t you sit down?” Justin says irritably instead, once more avoiding Zacharias’ question.

Zacharias puts the cup of tea down on the table and then sits down opposite Justin. He pushes the cup away from him – enough that he can’t smell it, not enough that Justin will ask him if he’s all right.

 _Lemon tea_. That was why. He only drank lemon tea nowadays and this is _green_ tea. No lemon.

 “I have nightmares sometimes,” he tells Justin, “Boggarts. Or anyway, I assume they’re what my boggart would look like if I met one now.”

Justin frowns as he fiddles with his cup. Zacharias cautiously pushes his cup forward a little. And then a little more.

“My house,” says Justin all of a sudden, making Zacharias spill some of his tea – Justin frowns at that as well – in surprise, “They burnt down my house. It was Halloween. We only just about got out in time.”

Zacharias dimly remembers a letter from his uncle crowing in delight because someone or the other had found ‘the filth’s nest’ and burnt it – _good riddance to bad rubbish_ , the letter had crowed – sent to him in the beginning of November that year. He had tossed it into the fire burning in the common room, Ernie’s eyes boring into the back of his neck as though that would somehow reveal the contents of his uncle’s letter. It had seemed witty at the time – good riddance to bad rubbish indeed. In the present, it merely pushes the nausea to the fore. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, holding his cup of tea with both his hands though really, at this point, all he wants to do is empty it down the sink.

“We went to London that night and got Kevin and Dean’s families out,” Justin continues, “Three days later there was a gas explosion in Kevin’s flat and one all the way across London in Dean’s house.”

Zacharias grimaces even though he’s known about Kevin’s flat for a while now.

“I mean,” says Justin, after a while, “It was the only reasonable thing to do.”

“I miss it sometimes,” he says, after a long pause, “The house. It isn’t the same anymore.”

“It was _my_ bridge,” he says with force, a little while later and Zacharias reaches across the table and clasps Justin’s free hand, “ _I_ burnt it – I just – I didn’t – I wish,” he blinks rapidly and his voice sinks to a whisper, “They didn’t have to go burn it as well.”

The grip on his hand tightens as Justin starts sobbing again. Ur-Justin-Ernie-conscience leers down at Zacharias and tells him that good people took strong stands against bad people, even if they were close relations. The very sick little voice tells him that Justin had it easy for him, with all his choices neatly delineated along an arbitrary but approved demarcation of good and evil.

Zacharias pushes his cup of tea and those voices away, gets up and crosses over to Justin, holding him close as he sobs into Zacharias’ shirt.

Justin will never get to go home and neither will he, but in very different ways. This is a fact. It does not matter if Justin does not understand this, he tells the sick little voice. Justin doesn’t _need_ to understand it.

Justin is only the voice of his conscience and consciences don’t need to understand.

* * *

**DISPATCH #2: THE FIRST DEATH**

There is a dream. It starts out pleasantly enough. A voice murmurs something in his ear and then there are lips pressed against his, then down his throat and along his collarbone. He opens his eyes and the man smiles down at him. Nikolay Danilov, a friend from Durmstrang. Justin starts to say something, but Nikolay laughs and shushes him with his mouth. This is a good dream, not like those dreams of burning and dying and screaming. Nikolay continues down the length of his body and his hips rock forward at Nikolay’s touch.

He reaches up to run his fingers through the man’s hair, but the man’s hair is tangled and rough and unnatural – not soft and warm and silky, like it usually is. Nikolay is cold too. His fingers are cold, against Justin’s skin and so are his shoulders and his arms.

There is mud, there is mud everywhere.

Then Nikolay finally lifts his head and looks at him. His eyes are puffy and glazed, there are strangle marks around his throat and his face is a blueish-grey. Nikolay is dead. Nikolay is a corpse, buried somewhere in some lonely wood. Nikolay is the corpse making love to him and he _enjoys_ it.

Justin calls this a dream, but sometimes this dream bleeds into reality and he will find himself in bed with one of his Oxford beaus – they will look up at him and for a short moment he sees Nikolay, dead-eyed and strangled. Sometimes this lasts for longer than a single short moment that is easily ignored. The dream refuses to relinquish its hold on reality. It takes all his will not to throw them off him then and there and run and take a shower. Instead he screws his eyes shut and stuffs his fist into his mouth and bites hard. It always works. They never can tell.

Justin finds he has developed an uncanny ability to fake orgasms. He has even perfected the ability of post-coital small talk even though every inch of him screams for the sanctuary of the shower. Of waiting till the next morning to wash away the mud and the death and the lingering feel of Nikolay’s cold and lifeless hands on him.

He just doesn’t know how to get rid of Danilov himself.

* * *

Justin dries his eyes carefully and considers confiding in Zacharias. For all the sordid jokes their friends make and their own awkward rekindling of their acquaintance – _he’s a fit bloke, Justin, but I wouldn’t touch him unless he was wearing a gag, y’know_ – Justin has no doubt that Zacharias flirts with him in the way Zacharias will occasionally flirt with Michael or Tracey or on the rare occasion, even Anthony. He does it to annoy and provoke, mostly, but Justin has observed his unspoken rules of conduct – one of which, apparently, involves not sleeping with people he considers friends.

He can be funny that way.

And Zacharias seems to understand the oddities of human nature in a way that no one else really does. Or at least, he is phlegmatic about it where others are perturbed – he never seems surprised or disgusted by it. He might even be sympathetic and at least, Justin thinks, he won’t have to worry about it coming back to haunt him later because it is highly unlikely that Zacharias is going to be one of his Oxford beaus. If he pretends, afterwards, that he said nothing, Zacharias will follow his lead because another one of Zacharias Smith’s unspoken rules is that there is to be no drama of the personal variety – none where _emotions_ and _intimacies_ are involved, because that is what purebloods and aristocrats do. What _gentlemen_ do.

It comes out anyway because for so long, he has held Danilov inside him and for the first time _someone_ is here to listen.

“They killed Danilov as well,” he says, barely above a whisper, “As though the house wasn’t enough.”

“Danilov?” Zacharias asks him curiously.

“Durmstrang,” says Justin unnecessarily, “We were – we wrote to each other a lot and then he and Krum and the others were helping us – and well, you know – he was very nice.”

Zacharias pulls a chair close and sits down next to Justin rather than across from him.

“Of course,” says Zacharias, his lips twitching only ever so slightly.

He leaves his tea on the other side of the table, Justin notices.

“He was very nice,” Justin repeats, “He disappeared for a few weeks, all of a sudden – no warnings – and then one day, I found him on the other side of the wood, half-buried in the leaves, and strangle marks around his neck. We packed up and moved across the country that night.”

It sounds so clinical when he puts it this way, that the dream seems almost unbelievable. A fiction he invented to explain the residual guilt he felt for Nikolay – that it was his death which mattered more than the fact that Justin had found it easy to forget that he and Nikolay had ever been lovers.

“I dream about it sometimes,” he continues, dully, “His corpse. Only it’s not on the ground, it’s touching me.”

Compassion, he thinks idly, is a strange look on Zacharias Smith’s face. So is the way Zacharias squeezes his hand wordlessly because really, what _sort_ of reply is there to a confession this intimate?

Zacharias Smith, he thinks, hates intimacy, but he is trying and Justin appreciates it much more than he would Ernie’s reassurances or Susan and Hannah trying to hug him – hugging is different from holding and Zacharias Smith, surprisingly enough, is very good at holding. There is just that amount of reassurance which suggests solidarity and space which suggests that he wishes he could understand the causes behind these things so that he can stop the world from doing whatever it was that had caused this in the first place. Maybe this is why Zacharias Smith asks so many questions about everything.

Almost as if he has read Justin’s mind, Zacharias’ arm snakes about his waist and Justin rests his head on Zacharias’ shoulder.

“You should drink your tea before it gets cold,” he tells Zacharias.

* * *

This is the point at which his memories fade into a hazy blur of technicolour, doused in the warm light of the French Riviera. There is a conversation with Lisa, or well, fragments of it. Her voice fades in and out like a bad recording, her face is a vague blur. He can’t remember if she was happy or pitying or neutral about everything; only that her voice fades in and out like a dim record that colours all of that autumn and winter and then the next autumn and winter, so on and so forth ad infinitum. _Perkins wanted to turn you in, I thought you were still worth something don’t prove me wrong. Your uncle comes much later, there are snatchers to catch. There’s nothing wrong with being bait._ So on and so forth, endlessly into the night as though Lisa is a broken gramophone record playing inside his head.

He remembers driving back too fast from Paris on the seventh of December, 1998. It’s the last turn up the gravel drive and he takes it much too fast – he _knows_ he’s going too fast, but he doesn’t bother with the brakes because he needs to wash Paris off of him and he doesn’t care, _he doesn’t care_. Everything is in twos; two bushes, two trees, two separate entrances to the double-driveway. _Drunk_ , _always drunk_. Something darts out of the bushes and he swerves to avoid it, but he’s _drunk_ or maybe not sober and there is a thud, the violent impact of his fender against something, a loud yelp and a shrieking howl and then silence as the car comes to a stop in the bushes lining the driveway.

Getting out of the car is a long process. There is a seatbelt first, and then the door itself and then legs. One or two or four? He plants his left foot on the gravel and then his right foot and then he stands up, clinging to the door as the world rocks wildly around him. Susanna is already running down the driveway and that expression on her face, it is sadness and panic, he thinks, as he touches his face to make sure his sunglasses are in place. He slams the door shut and comes around to the front of the car and there, just between the front left wheel and the back wheel of his grandfather’s Aston Martin is Jimbo. Happy Jimbo. Trusting Jimbo. Dead-and-mangled-like-a-mongrel-should-be Jimbo.

The body is still warm. Slick with blood. Susanna shudders and buries her face in her brother’s arm and then draws away suddenly, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. He must smell of Paris. Cigarettes and absinthe and Merlin knows what else they dished up at Pucey’s. In his attempts to demonstrate his unwillingness to discriminate he had tried everything indiscriminately. He lost count after the sixth shot and something else you snorted through a silver pipe-thing and yet another something that you smoked. It’s all a bright neon blue, pink and red haze now.

Susanna turns away and goes back inside the house without saying a word. Good. She needs to learn this lesson. Trust no one. Not even family. Not even Jimbo. Poor old Jimbo. Poor old dead Jimbo. Jimbo, dead because he thinks brakes are overrated and because he’s seeing double today. Because he has a fierce headache coming on. Because this is Zacharias’ life now. Because Jimbo was destined to die anyway because everything he loves disintegrates under the fierceness of his love anyway.

He kicks Jimbo’s body down the hillside because a funeral and a burial for a dog is just stupid, it’s so transient, and this is none of Susanna’s business, even though she watches him watch Jimbo’s body tumble down the side of the cliff. He will tell her, anyway, that he’s buried Jimbo at the bottom of the garden and Susanna will say nothing, though something in her eyes grows distant and shuttered as though Zacharias is a stranger to her now. Zacharias Smith wouldn’t have kicked the body of his dog down the cliff. There is no way to tell her that the body he kicked down the cliff was his own, that this was all an object lesson in the inherent despicableness of human nature. That Jimbo would have died one day anyway and better sooner than later.

 _Good riddance to bad rubbish_ , he thinks as he is violently sick, much later that night – and everything Susanna has tried to make him eat comes out. Not the drugs though. Not the alcohol. Not Paris. Not Jimbo.

It all fades again. This time, the blurry haze is grey like smoke and cigarettes and Paris.

* * *

“You should drink your tea before it gets cold,” says Justin.

Zacharias wishes he had the courage to empty his tea all over the table, all over Justin’s lap because tea, for all the good it does, will never restore three years’ worth of memories or feed colour into the grey stretches of his mind or bring Jimbo back from the dead. Justin doesn’t know this. In the face of Justin’s suffering it seems trivial. Irrelevant. A dead dog versus a lover. There can be no comparison, not even if the dead dog was himself. Anyway, Zacharias has always been a coward so he might as well play to type and take the easier path.

He draws the cup towards him and takes several sips – _too large_ , they burn as they go down his throat – before he sets the cup down on the table and looks at Justin, almost defiantly. The sick voice tells him that the best way to win Justin’s trust is to vomit all over him and Zacharias suppresses this wild fantasy because Justin, Justin will only understand it to mean that Zacharias is disgusted with _him_ when Zacharias, in fact, is disgusted by the thought of Jimbo’s dead and mangled body.

“Thanks,” says Zacharias, “I’m sorry, I’m not very helpful.”

“Talking,” Justin replies, “It helps. I haven’t you know – told – it’s not something you can tell anyone – it sounds like a joke when you say it out loud, you know?”

Michael had laughed when he told him the story of Jimbo, but then Zacharias had told it as a joke, so it isn’t the same thing at all.

“I think it’s horrible,” he says truthfully. He isn’t sure if he means Jimbo or Danilov. Maybe he means both.

“ _War_ is horrible,” Justin corrects him. The unspoken implication hangs heavily in the air. _You wouldn’t know_.

“War is horrible,” Zacharias agrees.

* * *

**DISPATCH #3: BROKEN BODIES**

The needle pricks his skin and Justin turns the other way as the blood slowly fills the bag. This is the sixth donation he is making and the sight of blood still makes him sick. Somehow, it’s different when they’re in the middle of battle. There’s no time to think then, or for fine sensibilities to override the survival instinct: shield, heal, continue. Even afterwards, with the adrenaline still running high and the panic of almost-death, it is easy. He heals and moves on.

This is drawn out. This is, he supposes, how cows and chickens in slaughter houses would feel if they knew what they were destined for. There are six or seven vampires and their eyes are all trained on the line of bags they’re filling up. Hunger, thirst, vibrates in the air. It’s only a miracle that he is more than an overgrown meat sausage – or blood bag. Blood sausage? – to them. They look at him and slaver. He looks at the ceiling and prays to a silent God. The prayers float up and then float back down and the war never ends because there is no God, even if his mum and dad and his brother believe in him in that casual way of theirs.

Someone gives Justin a Blood-Replenishing potion and then the needle drives into his skin yet again. This is his third pint of blood and this is the point at which the room begins to spin and black dots start floating around his eyes. On the other side of the divide, the Red Cross advises people give only one pint of blood at a go, but the world on the other side of the divide is a world where blood-donors give blood because they feel ethically obligated to do so. This world is very different. The closest parallel, he supposes, is blood diamonds, except here they pay with blood for guns and potions supplies and then, hopefully, make the Death Eaters pay again with their own blood and their lives.

The Red Cross also insists on its donors being healthy adults. Justin looks down the row of faces, even as the world spins violently. Dennis is much too young, but he insists and so do the others. Amnesty International and the UN would have a fit, he thinks woozily, if they knew what was happening. His father would have a fit. His father is miles away in Geneva, though, and his father doesn’t know.

The world slides away then, just as someone feeds him his fourth blood-replenishing potion, and it all goes black.

* * *

“Most people don’t know the half of it,” Justin says quietly, because _most people_ is less pinpointed than the _you_. Ernie does not know, neither does Susan or Hannah, though he suspects Seamus might, and Anthony, because Kevin tells Anthony everything when he is drunk which is more often than not, nowadays, “My father would have a fit if I told him we paid for guns with blood.”

“Did _all_ of you give blood?” Zacharias asks, the curiosity bleeding into his voice though he tries to keep it out.

“Not the very young ones,” says Justin, evading the question as best he can.

“Dennis did this as well,” Zacharias states in a voice which brooks no argument.

He could lie, but the truth is, Justin never had any sway over either of the Creevey brothers. None of them had. They both came and went as they pleased and no one, not even Kevin at his most threatening, could make them listen. Only the Boy Who Lived and using the Boy Who Lived as an excuse to keep them sitting away from the raging war was a thin enough excuse that both the brothers had argued it successfully.

Of course, the deeper truth is, Justin grew tired of taking care of these children and rather than fight, he let them have their way, especially if they were fourteen and above. If they were old enough to snog people and go to dances, they were old enough to know the price of war, he had thought at the time, tired and uncharitable.

Zacharias, he thinks, might understand that because Zacharias thought similar things; only about Harry Potter and other people about whom such thoughts were taboo. At least, it was taboo to say it out loud but Zacharias had never bothered in school and Justin is certain, still doesn’t bother now.

It would be nice to be Zacharias and not bother with taboos.

“Yes,” says Justin.

“I didn’t mean to,” he pleads, when Zacharias remains silent, frowning at his still nearly-full cup of tea, “Saying no – and then arguing – I thought that if they did it, they’d want to stop.”

“They wanted to fight,” is all that Zacharias says in reply and Justin can’t tell if the blankness of Zacharias’ face is to protect _him_ from whatever it is that is going through Zacharias’ mind, or if the blankness is to shield Zacharias from Justin.

The thought of Zacharias having secrets unnerves him.

“Yes,” he says softly.

Zacharias takes a long sip of tea in response.

* * *

There is another memory that stands out in sharp relief, only this one barely emerges from the vast length of grey which constitutes the rest of December, January and February. The warm sunshine of the French Riviera is absent from it, as are its bright colours. Instead everything is coloured blue, green and grey. This is a _Paris_ memory, a _rare_ breed. The thin muslin curtains are drawn to the side and there are raindrops running down the window. The teal floral wallpaper adds to the general dolour of the atmosphere which is fitting: it is ten A.M. on a Tuesday morning, the ninth of March, 1999 and he is in Paris.

There is also a girl in the bed next to him and a string of disjointed words and thoughts he remembers discreetly _extracting_ – it’s such a disgusting word, but there really is no other way to put it – from her, all under the guise of luring her into bed with him. He is nearly as adept at this now, as the Slytherin girls are, though he can’t ever make use of wide-eyed ingenuity on anyone. _You look far too knowing_ , Lisa’s broken gramophone voice says loudly. _I look too knowing_. Too knowing to be entirely trustworthy. Too knowing to do anything but use his wit and where his wit isn’t enough, give into the inevitability of using his body in the crudest way possible. Crude, because there is something graceless about sex that is deceptive or a weapon for a government. Crude, because every inch of him belongs to the Ministry and he is reminded of that every minute of the day.

He supposes he should enjoy the warmth of her slender body, curved against his, or last night, her pressed against him, but all he can think about is the warm hard line of his uncle’s body pressed against his and the cold wall against his back as his uncle waves a knife dangerously close to his face. When her face finally dissolves into bright-white as he squeezes his eyes shut, it is the bright-white of the Cruciatus he remembers, and then his uncle’s violent anger because he will not join the Death Eaters and he will not let his uncle do whatever sick thing it is he wants to do to his sister Susanna.

His watch tells him it is ten fifteen when he finally gets out of bed. He dresses, then finds a notepad and begins to jot down the words, thoughts and answers, folds the note and slides it into an envelope. The note is dispatched to Lisa by half-past ten and then he returns to his flat and unceremoniously kicks the girl out.

This at least, is his. Once he is done with them, he can slip back into his old skin and treat them with his old abrasiveness. Chuck them out and ignore the way the tight little knot in his stomach relaxes. The process continues. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. This is what it boils down to: a struggle for his body and what can be achieved with six feet and three inches of Zacharias Smith. Unlike Draco, the signs of this struggle are not visible – there are no marks or brands on his body that can let anyone know which choices were forced on him, or nearly forced on him. Somewhere, buried in his trunk, is his old charmed Galleon. That was a choice, but in the end, not his _kind_ of choice. This isn’t his choice either, let alone his _kind_ of choice.

He stares at the empty skin of his left arm where his uncle would have had him be branded. Like a _slave_. Like _cattle_ and _canon-fodder_.

There is a quill he has, also a relic of his fifth year in Hogwarts, which he stole because he thought it was interesting and because Zacharias Smith played by no one’s rules except whichever ones he chose to conjure at the moment. Except now the rules he is forced to play by are made by some invisible figure who demands that he do _whatever_ is necessary to get the information they need him to get. Or else. _Or else_.

He starts scratching painstakingly at the paper, ignoring – _relishing_ – the burning sensation on his left arm, where the mark would have been if he had not decided that his uncle was mad, his mother was mad and everyone was mad. Mad and _wrong_.  If he repeats the lie to himself enough, it will become truth, one way or the other. Or perhaps this is not a lie at all, but a reminder that this too will end and one day he will be free. One day, he will be able to step into this dingy apartment and not feel the walls close around him and suffocate him with memories of the harsh warmth of his uncle’s body as he tries to murder Zacharias, or the image of his mother standing rooted to where she is – a pale, white figure in the doorway with _his_ blond hair and _his_ snub nose, or maybe it is the other way around. His hair, his nose – _your mother’s son_ – belong to her and this is why she can sell him to save herself.

 _I am the king of the world_.

Again and again he inscribes it on that sheet of paper, then vanishes the writing and begins again. The next time he looks at his watch it shows that it is half-past one and he should eat. The words are no longer thin scratches in his skin but deep slices. As though he had the courage to take his knife and carve those words in there.

But Zacharias Smith is a coward, so instead, he has to settle for the perverse pleasure of using a tool of discipline and punishment to mark himself with himself as a promise of liberation. This is his secret. A slice of him that is entirely his own and not his mother’s, Dumbledore’s, Voldemort’s or the Ministry’s.

The memory fades from blue-green-grey to grey and then black and for a long long stretch, his memories are an endless length of black.

* * *

Justin has not seen the words etched into the skin of his left arm, so Zacharias drinks his tea instead. He doesn’t know, Zacharias thinks, what it means to choose to hurt oneself voluntarily. But then, most people don’t. Most people don’t go around carving words into their arms to remind themselves that their bodies are their own. Or that they will one day be free. Better that they _volunteer,_ rather than _be volunteered._ When he looks back up, Justin is watching him, watching him carefully and this must mean that the mask his mother and father taught him to cultivate from a young age has gone up. He schools his face back into a mixture of compassion and gentleness even though it only makes the nausea stronger.

Justin fought. He ran. Justin watched fourteen year olds fight. Zacharias watched seventeen and twenty year olds who had made bad choices receive their comeuppance. The two were not equivalent. One side chose. One side, in trying to game both sides, fell through the cracks and into the jaws of the bureaucratic monster that was the Ministry.

Justin, he thinks, will never see the files buried away down in the Department of Mysteries. Not even Anthony will see them and Anthony works in the Department of Mysteries. Those are Ministry secrets that the Ministry – the mysterious department, _MI7_ – will take to the grave with them.

“You’re not responsible for them,” he tells Justin, “Even fourteen year olds. They can choose.”

He should know.  He still remembers the way Susanna’s eyes went distant after Jimbo – choosing to trust him a little less.

“Aren’t I?” Justin asks him, bitterly.

Zacharias shakes his head and takes another sip, hoping Justin misses the slight shaking of his hand.

“Your tea is getting cold,” he whispers.

* * *

**DISPATCH #4: THE WAR ENDS**

The irony of Colin Creevey’s death is that it occurs on the one day both the Creevey brothers agree to follow Justin’s command to stay out of the fight. He tells them to go to the other side of the forest, while the older members of the Muggleborn Resistance lead the ambush with the remaining Aurors and Hit Wizards who have stayed faithful to the memory of Amelia Bones and Rufus Scrimgeour. There are hugs and goodbye kisses. He remembers hugging Colin, miraculously the only sixteen year old still shorter than him, and pressing his lips to the top of his head. Justin reasons that if he is marching straight into the jaws of death, never to come back out alive, he might as well embarrass both Colin and himself with this display of brotherly affection. The children leave, herded by Colin and a few other sixteen and fifteen year olds. Justin, Kevin, Dean and the others take up their positions as cover for the Aurors with their guns.

This is the end. The children might live, but this is almost certainly their end. Someone will find brooms and attack them from above and they will die. It is all very simple and they all know this.

Only unfortunately, the children run straight into the remnants of a Death Eater camp.

There are distress signals that they have agreed upon. For a moment, six or seven red flares hang heavy in the sky and then nothing.

“ _Go_ ,” Gawain Robards tells him and the others, “ _Hurry_.”

Justin and the others run through the trees, roughly in the direction of where the flares hung red in the sky. The screams and shouting – and a quarter of the herd of centaurs – guide them once they are close. 

The camp is a criss-cross of spells and Justin wastes no time in slinging his gun behind his back and using his wand. Down goes a Death Eater on his left and then a weaselly looking man ahead on his right. He may have been only a Snatcher. Frankly at this point, Justin can’t bring himself to care.

This is when it happens. Colin is looking around wildly for Dennis, that stupid camera of his dangling around his neck when a man in a mask with a _knife_ lunges out of nowhere. Justin watches in horror as the knife arcs through the air and it slices a neat line through Colin’s midriff before Colin can even cast a stunning spell.

His legs are moving and the Death Eater is blown away with a red bolt to his chest before he can deliver the fatal blow. Kevin will tell him later that Justin cast the Cruciatus Curse without even thinking twice about it. All Justin remembers is pushing the camera aside and hastily opening Colin’s robes to see the damage. Colin’s fingers warm and desperate on the sleeves of his robes. Colin whispering _Dennis_ over and over again as Justin casts the healing spell over and over again. _Tergeo, tergeo, tergeo_. He even prays, desperately, to a God his mother seems to believe in in a casual Anglican sort of way, hoping that something will happen. The wound reopens as fast as he heals it.

“Madame Pomfrey,” he says thickly, “Pomfrey.”

Dennis and Dean appear, finally, and Dennis throws himself on his brother with a sob. This is when Kevin leaves. Justin will learn later that Kevin found himself a beater’s bat and bashed the Death Eater’s head in so many times, that all that was left over was a bloody pulp. He will also learn that Kevin killed no less than three Death Eaters this way, while he organized the rest of the children into a protective ring around them with the sixteen and seventeen year olds on the outside and the young ones on the inside.

Colin goes very still and Dennis lets out something between a shriek and a wail. A vicious noise which is _torn_ from him almost, that makes Dean grab him, despite the fact that he is shaking himself.

“You did this,” he whispers to Justin, when he cannot scream anymore.

When the camp finally goes silent, the last of the Death Eaters gone because Kevin, good old Kevin, had the sense to form some kind of hastily contrived counter-attack-cum-defense, Justin stands, holding Colin’s body in his arms and looks around him.

There are too many children among the dead. There are too many eyes, empty and raw, looking at him, begging him to tell them that this too will pass. They will be all right. They will weather this like they have weathered everything else. Beg him to tell him that this was an _accident_. That this is somehow, not his fault.

“ _You did this_ ,” Dennis howls wildly, “ _We listened to you and you did this_.”

Dean holds him close but it is not enough. Everything is misty, but Justin blinks back his tears because there is no time to cry now. Instead, he arranges the dead with the rest of the children and gives them last minute instructions. Vicky Frobisher takes Dennis up to the castle as Dean and Kevin cast wards around the area to keep the children safe with the centaurs.

“To Hogwarts,” he says, when they are done.

* * *

“I did this,” Justin sobs into Zacharias’ shirt, “I told them to leave. Wait there until the battle was done. They knew if we lost they would have been found and killed anyway. They _knew_ what I was doing.”

Zacharias mumbles something into his hair which might be something about choosing and following, but he only half lets it out, as though he _knows_ this is the wrong thing to say, but an inevitable truth that Justin must face.

Justin knows what he has had to face. The broken grief on the faces of ten different families. Funerals and apologies and eulogies and parents who asked him ‘ _was he brave?’_ or ‘ _did she have any last words – leave anything behind?_ ’.Dennis, landing him a facer in the middle of Diagon Alley in September. Colin Creevey’s thin frame, at night, bleeding and bleeding all over him until he is drenched and then drowning in his blood – _their_ blood.

He knows the truth, but the truth is unimportant because reality does not conform to the truth which underlies it. This is something he ought to tell Ernie, not Zacharias.

Zacharias only understands the truth. Not the lies. This is why he asks questions.

“I did this,” he repeats in a tiny whisper as he thinks of the sound Dennis made when Colin died, “I knew what was going to happen and I did it anyway.”

* * *

The last memory, before everything disappears entirely into a blur until Michael rescues him from a prison cell in the Czech Republic, is entwined with another older one: they both involve his uncle shrinking away from him. They are both better and worse memories than the memory of his uncle slamming him into a wall and threatening him with a knife when he tells him he will not join the Death Eaters.

The first memory begins on an empty street at two in the morning on the third of June, 1999. For six months now, he has avoided the question of his uncle; for half that time, he has ignored all the signs that point him towards Charles Selwyn and Evan Rosier. Six months is not a bad run. He should have known that it would come to an end. He should have known that it would have inevitably come down to the answer to the question – _which parent_?

He is staring down the end of his uncle’s wand, his own wand at his uncle’s throat and Lisa urges him to cast the spell and be done with it. _Choose_.

“You can’t do this to me,” Charles Selwyn says softly, “I’m your uncle.”

This is where the second memory begins. It unfolds on to Cicely Smith _nee_ Selwyn, three nights before Christmas in 1997, scolding Susanna for her wild imagination – _you’ve been reading those muggle books again, haven’t you?_ – when she tells her mother that her uncle visits her room each night and takes a little bit of her blood for some potion he is brewing that requires a Squib’s blood. His mother turns to his father and bids him discipline his daughter for telling lies. Zacharias only sees the way Susanna has grown unnaturally pale over the past few days. His father sends her to her room with no dinner.

“He really does,” the thirteen year old sobs into her brother’s arms, later that night, when he sneaks her two pears and an apple.

“We’ll catch him and make him stop,” he promises her.

He waits in the corner of her room, carefully hidden in the darkness by the side of her bed. Three hours later, the wooden board outside Susanna’s room creaks and the door opens to admit Charles Selwyn. In the moonlight, his Azkaban-pale skin and the hungry expression on his face make the muggle stories about vampires seem believable. He removes a knife from his belt and a little vial.

“Just a little more,” he says, casting a silencing spell over Susanna, “I promise.”

He stops, however, at the touch of Zacharias’ wand at his throat.

“Don’t you dare touch her,” Zacharias says, summoning all that his father has left him – his height, his cold fury, his hauteur.

“Zacharias,” says Charles, the fear on his face easing into an ingratiating expression, “My dear boy –“

“ _Don’t_ ,” he snaps, “Leave her alone, before I call the house down.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me,” Charles Selwyn laughs nervously, “Not your own uncle.”

There is a movement in the door way and that image, of his mother in her dove grey robes, the tip of her wand alight in her left hand, standing in the door way will come back to him and haunt him much later. She stands there, watching, even though Charles Selwyn has a knife and a wand and her son only has his wand. She stands there silent and watching, he realizes with cold clarity, like she always has.

“Wouldn’t I?” Zacharias says in a low, cold voice, drawing himself up to his full height – his _Smith_ height, his only gift from his father besides his hauteur – and looking down on his uncle.

His mother only watches, her brown eyes wide and her cheeks slightly flushed, as he inexorably forces his uncle back towards the door way by the mere power of his presence –  _fifteen generations of Smiths on his shoulders_ – and the wand he has pointed underneath his uncle’s throat.

“Get out,” he says, “Stay away from her.”

A week later, he and his sister leave for France.

In the present, Zacharias turns and stuns Lisa. The tiny cobbled street seems smaller, even smaller than it does before, as though the stones and the bricks and the eaves of the houses have swollen to fill the empty spaces of this street so they may witness the crime he is about to commit in the absence of Lisa’s conscious presence – _silence them and even the stones will sing of my sins_.

“I’m letting you live,” Zacharias tells his uncle, “Because you are family and mother would never forgive me if I killed you on the spot, or if I let the Aurors have you.” _Which parent?_ “There are three groups of Aurors searching for you, four streets north of this one. In fifteen minutes they will be here. I’ll let you go, as long as you promise to keep your head down and stay away from Britain.”

“There are two of us and one of you,” his uncle says, as Evan Rosier appears behind him, “Why should I listen to you?”

_Which parent?_

“Because you are a Selwyn of Seisyllwig Hall,” Zacharias says, just above a whisper. _Which parent?_  “And you are honour-bound to me by both blood and my mercy.”

It is fortunate, he thinks, that Evan Rosier has enough respect for the old customs that he takes a step back when Zacharias says these words.

“That is a deep vow,” says Charles Selwyn quietly, grasping the hand that Zacharias has held out to him, “Blood calls to blood, I suppose. What about the girl?”

“I count you equal,” Zacharias replies, “I’ll take care of her.”

The magic is no more than a slight warmth that passes between their hands – it is no _magic_ , really, but a promise spoken with intent, which is in many ways the same thing. It is sacred and old and _pure_.

His uncle leans close and whispers in his ear, “Blood always shows. Thank your mother on my behalf.”

This is the moment when the image of his mother standing in the doorway, silently watching him and his uncle, in her dove grey robes and with her wand held aloft, is printed indelibly on his mind. Selwyn thinks he has parted with a great secret in telling Zacharias this, but he realizes now, through the hazy blur of his memories that there never was any doubt in his mind, even on the seventh of September, 1998, _which_ parent had parted with that photograph.

His uncle releases his hand and disappears swiftly into the night with Evan Rosier. Zacharias leans over Lisa and whispers an _Obliviate_ , even though the stones, the bricks, the eaves are all leaning in and listening. Watching. He casts several spells in quick succession until he is satisfied that he is bloodied enough, _empty_ enough, then he wakes Lisa.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, even as she whispers _legilimens_. All she will find is a hazy grey-black blur and four cobbled stones which look like a four-leaved clover, lit by the warm light of the old gas lamps of the _Quartier Magique_. He was trained by the best, the way he was trained to empty his face like a gentleman.

She touches his face gently, “You did your best.”

It is a miracle, he thinks, that she cannot hear the stones, bricks and eaves shouting with the weight of his crime, or even see the dove grey robes of his mother as she stares at him as though he is a stranger and this drama unfolding before her is none of her concern – only the slight flush in her cheeks betraying that she feels _anything_ at all.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, in a noiseless whisper – to Lisa, to the woman in dove grey robes, to the stones, bricks and eaves and empty windows, “I’m sorry.”

Everything dissolves into a fiery kaleidoscopic blaze from then on. His next clear memory is a prison cell in the Czech Republic, four hundred pages of notes and Michael looking down at him with his arms crossed and bail he has scraped together with the help of Anthony.

* * *

He wonders what Justin would say if he told Justin that he chose to let Evan Rosier go because Evan Rosier was with his uncle. He wonders if Justin has ever suffered at the hands of Evan Rosier, or worse still, watched someone else suffer at the hands of Evan. Or if Justin even knows what Evan Rosier was capable of. He must have. Everyone knew what Evan could do; the precision with which he would flay men and women and then _purify_ them with salt, among other things. He wonders if Justin has any scars, or worse, if any of those scars belong to Evan Rosier.  

He places his hand on the table so Justin will not be able to see how it shakes.

Justin pulls back and wipes his tears, “Thanks,” he says, “You’re a good listener.”

“You didn’t have to do any of this for me,” Justin continues, and then half-jokes, “I’m not sure you understand the half of it.”

There is an unspoken assumption, among his friends, that Zacharias Smith never fought in the war. This assumption is true, but the only people who know how _untrue_ it is are six or seven Slytherins. They are not friends. Zacharias isn’t even sure if they are _acquaintances_. Maybe comrades-in-arms, in the same secret war.

He thinks about how Justin feels like Jimbo – warm and alive. But Jimbo is a cold skeleton in some shrubbery, somewhere in the French countryside. He thinks about his mother in dove grey and his father and the game of pretend they all play. So many things to remember, but nothing more than odd fragments from here and there. The antique clock on the wall chiming the Westminster – the antique clock he flung from the roof, though he has no recollection of doing so. Teal wallpaper, raindrops on a window in Paris and blood all over his arm, all over his desk, all over his notepaper. The new alphabet: A is for Assumed Death Eater, C is for Collaborator, D for Death Eater, S for Sympathizer (Smith, Selwyn) and a question mark for him, the unknown entity. The _unknowable_ entity. The _untrustworthy_ entity. Far too proficient with the use of the Cruciatus, which, of course he is, because his uncle used it on him three times on the thirtieth of August, 1997. _I won’t join your stupid organization_. The untrustworthy, unknowable entity. The entity which let one of the most feared Death Eaters – second only to Bellatrix Lestrange – go because it was his _uncle_ with him and this was the decision he had made subconsciously, months ago when Sally-Anne Perkins came to him with that file. The same entity, whose willingness to sacrifice his body to the cause caught them Scabior, Dolohov, Gibbon and Jugson.

But of course, this was not _the_ war. The war ended in 1998.

“You’re right,” he says, molding his mouth into a grin, though all he wants to do his drain his tea and then throw it all up, “I can’t understand.”


End file.
